Mr. Match: The Boxed Set

by Delancey Stewart

  Erica clapped her hands in front of her, and Magalie smiled, her warm eyes lighting up.

  "A tasting would be lovely if it isn't too much trouble," she said, a French accent making her words sound rich and romantic.

  Anna had finished switching out the cakes and she stood now, putting the tray on the counter. "Hello," she said. She seemed to have recovered her ability to speak. "I'm sorry about when you came in, that was very unprofessional."

  "I like the idea of nicknames," Mrs. Fuerte said. "It makes things more simple, yes?"

  Anna and I exchanged a glance. "Yes," we agreed.

  "What are some of the other couples called?" Magalie asked.

  I wasn't sure we should answer, but were already in pretty deep, and the ladies didn't seem offended. None of our nicknames were meant to be hurtful or mean—just descriptive. "Well, there's Yoga and Dark," I told them, and explained how those names fit. "And Jumpy and Jock got married last week. And in the past we've had Med and Mod, Micro and Macro, Adam and the Apple..."

  "Don't forget Berry and the Boss!" Anna said. Like me, she seemed to sense that it wouldn't be prudent to tell these women about Monkey and the Madman, one of our less flattering nicknames, or Diva and the Dork. We stuck to the most sedate.

  "I love it," Erica said. "And I am Snappy. I like it."

  "You are," Magalie agreed, smiling at her.

  "If you'd like to sit, I'll get the tasting things," I told them, and slipped into the back to get plates and the cake cutters.

  Anna seated the little party, poured champagne for them, and then told them about the flavors on the tray. I came back out as Erica was helping Anna describe all the cakes, since she and Fernando had tasted everything we had today.

  "And this one is like heaven," she said. "If heaven was made from lemons." The lemon meringue sponge was really good.

  The ladies were eager to taste, and to drink champagne, and soon Anna and I were sitting with them, laughing and sipping as well, since we were technically closed after five. It was a good group, and in some ways it took my mind off Hamish, though it was hard to miss the clear connection between this group and my heartbreak. After a while, Erica turned to me and asked the question I should have known was coming.

  "How are things with you and Hamish? I thought there was some kind of important family thing happening?"

  My face must have given me away. Or maybe it was the champagne. Or possibly the effort of holding it all in all day long, but the tears came immediately. They came in an ugly sob and soon I was melting into a puddle.

  "Oh no," Magalie said as I cried. "This cannot be good."

  "Darling," Mrs. Fuerte said, patting my shoulder. "You can tell us. It's just the girls here. What's going on?"

  Anna put her arm around me and I looked up to find four concerned and caring faces, and my heart broke just a little bit more for how lucky I'd gotten to have this shop, this life. "It's over," I began. And I told them everything. I told them how silly and naive I'd been to believe Hamish could still be interested in me when his life had clearly skyrocketed so far from what we'd shared when we were younger. I told them about the royal ultimatum, and how Hamish had simply done the most logical thing to keep his place in line for the crown. I even told them about Madame Anastasia.

  "Um," Erica said, interrupting that last part about familiar faces. "I don't think so."

  I shook my head. "No, she was right. It was just as she said."

  "Hamish only has the one face, I'm pretty sure," Erica said. "It's a little bit furry, so it's hard to see sometimes, but I've known him since he joined the Sharks. And he's never been anything except a little soft-spoken, extremely kind, and definitely not a player off the field."

  Magalie nodded. "I haven't known him long, but I agree."

  "When I first arrived, I saw him," I told them, feeling a little like it was my job to prove Hamish wasn't the man they thought he was. Had he really deceived us all so completely? "He had a woman on each knee. He looked completely distracted by them, and he even kissed one of them. I couldn't stay and watch any more."

  Erica shook her head emphatically. "Listen to me Sophie. You told us about the man Hamish was when you were young. And now you're telling us that he's a completely different person. And what I'm saying to you is that you're wrong. Hamish is the guy who always stands up for his teammates. He's the ultimate wingman, and the best drinking buddy Trace has ever had. But he isn't a player, and he's never been the life of the party. He stays on the sidelines, keeps to himself a lot, and I have honestly never seen him take a girl home."

  I thought about this, the hurt and angry part of my brain not wanting to accept it. If Hamish hadn't changed, he wouldn't care about the crown. I shook my head. "It doesn't matter. He sees what women can be like—all glitzy and glamorous, tanned and worldly. And that's not me."

  "I don't think it's Hamish either," Magalie said softly. "We had a quiet talk once at the bar after a game, and he asked if I missed my homeland, telling me how much he missed his. He mentioned you, actually. He said you were the only girl he'd ever loved. I thought it was quite sweet."

  A little finger of doubt worked its way into the hard lump of anger and hurt I'd allowed to build in my chest. I wanted to believe her. I wanted it more than anything, and I found that my intuition, which I had always relied on heavily, did believe her words were true. Had I jumped to a conclusion? One put into my head by my stepfather of all people?

  "Maybe I've made a mistake," I said. But before I could really work out what to do next, a commotion arose on the street outside the shop.

  "Is that..." Mrs. Fuerte began, rising from her chair to go to the window facing the street. "Is that a sheep?"

  Anna lifted her hands to her ears at the same moment, but something in her smile made me eye her suspiciously. "What is that sound?"

  We all moved to the windows to witness the most ridiculous spectacle the streets of La Jolla has ever seen.

  Chapter 112

  Killing it on the Pipes. (Or Killing the Pipes).

  Hamish

  No small gesture would be fitting for a group of MacEvoys from Durnland hell-bent on setting things to rights. We'd always been big and noisy and over-exuberant, and my family convinced me that the best way to get Sophie back would be nothing short of a spectacle. And since we had this flock of sheep we'd rounded up for the Feats, we might as well use them. I'd called Anna earlier, and she'd confirmed that Sophie was at the bakery, so that's where we were heading.

  "I can't believe we let you talk us into this," Erick Evans said from where he sat with Hoss, in the back of the bus, which held my entire family along with as many sheep as we could load into the center aisle.

  "And I don't think you're getting your deposit back on this bus," Hoss commented, peering at the aisle floor where a steaming pile of sheep dung had been recently dropped.

  "Details," James told them.

  Trace and Fuerte and Adam Isley were seated toward the front of the bus, and Trace was busy investigating the Durnish bagpipes Mam had brought along. She didn't go anywhere without them.

  "Don't break 'em, lad," Mam told him as he lifted the pipes and poked at the drum on the bottom.

  "Do bagpipes usually have a drum?" He asked her.

  "Durnish pipes do," she said, crossing her arms and sitting up taller. "The Scots version don't. Scots are too lazy to pipe and drum at the same time."

  Charlie and Dane stifled their laughter. Mam was extremely patriotic, and quite devoted to the Durnish pipes because her own father had taught her to play. She'd been playing the pipes her whole life, and had insisted that I couldn't properly make up with Sophie without the pipes. The fact that I was a horrible player and hadn't practiced in at least a decade didn't seem to bother her. "Ya'll do fine," she said. "It's in yer blood, lad."

  "Mrs. MacEvoy," Max said, sliding across the aisle to sit next to her with a notepad in his hand. "Could I ask you a few questions?"

  Max. With his strange question
s. I didn't have the capacity to think about that today. I was too nervous.

  My stomach was turning flips as the bus approached La Jolla Cove, where the Saturday afternoon traffic was significant. Fuerte was looking around outside and noticing the crowd.

  "This will be the second time I've been forced into a skirt by one of you guys," he said, shaking his head at the kilt he was wearing.

  "I think you look very handsome," Marigold told him, earning her a poke from Oscar, who rarely spoke but who was clearly possessive.

  "It'll be a proper Durnish procession," Mam said, as we neared our offload point. "Hamish will take the lead with the pipes, and the rest of us will walk on the sides of the sheep, keeping them in line."

  "Ma'am?" Hoss asked politely. "How exactly do we keep sheep in line? I mean, I just...I don't have a lot of shepherding experience."

  Mam took this question in stride. "We'll rely a bit on Mr. James. He herds sheep back at home." She looked about to offer a few more tips, but the bus pulled to a stop and Mr. Peabody called out, "This is as close as I can get." The man had been charmed by our plan to win Sophie back, surprisingly, and had volunteered to drive the bus. "I'll maneuver around to the other end of the street to pick the sheep up as you're done," he told us.

  The next few minutes were utter chaos, as ten men in kilts and an equal number of sheep disembarked a bus onto the sidewalk in one of the most populated parts of La Jolla, Mam, Mari and Penny just behind.

  "Form up now," Mam told us, no doubt calling on the skills she'd needed to corral seven children. "Hamish, the pipes."

  This was the part I wasn't sure about, and now that we just a block from Sophie's bakery, the nerves were jolting around my insides, making me feel like I might actually vomit. The smell of sheep didn't help.

  If I hadn't been so nervous, the sight of Trace Johnson in a kilt would have been something that required more than a few jokes and snapshots, but I'd have to leave it to the crowds to capture those for me. And as we organized ourselves and the sheep, crowds were forming.

  "I think you're supposed to have a permit for shit like this," Fuerte said, as Mam directed the sheep out onto the road between mystified drivers.

  I shrugged and followed directions.

  "Play, Hamish," Mam said, and a minute later, I was at the front of the most ridiculous parade La Jolla Cove has ever seen, marching at the front of a bedraggled herd of sheep, surrounded by soccer players in tartan kilts, and playing a mutilated version of the Durnish classic pipe and drum tune, "Highland Home, Ever in my Heart to Be." (Durnish song titles were never succinct. I was just pleased Mam hadn't selected the Durnish anthem, which was called "Durnland, Durnland, Be thee True, Be thee Free, Durnland, Home of my Heart and Soul." The playing of that one was as complicated as the title.)

  Blaring notes rose up over the surprised crowd, the sounds like a combination of strangling geese and a siren horn that someone had tried to plug with a groundhog, and we moved slowly down the street. Isley called out in surprise as one of the sheep nipped at his kilt, and Hoss was yelling at the animals like they were dogs. "Good sheep, good sheep. Heel!"

  As we got closer to the bakery, my heart was racing, making my playing all the more erratic, and I was finding that beating the drum while pumping the bag and blowing took so much concerted effort I was feeling lightheaded. There was an excess of noise and chaos between the sheep procession, the pipes, the guys yelling at the sheep, the honking cars, and the crowd, I almost didn't notice Trace shouting in alarm as one of the sheep broke free and bolted ahead.

  "Mr. James!" Mam called back to him. "Kindly retrieve that sheep, won't you?" If everyone else was out of sorts and panicked, Mam was the picture of serene confidence, and a fondness for her swelled inside me, even as I garbled the tune I was devotedly pumping out. She was unflappable, and she would do anything for her children. She smiled up at me as I played, and we brought the procession back to the sidewalk, just in front of Cake me Up.

  "There's your girl," Mam said to me, spotting Sophie through the plate glass window. "Get her back, lad."

  Sophie stood just inside the window with Anna, Erica Johnson, Magalie, and Fuerte's mother. Each of them wore matching expressions that I could only categorize as somewhere between horrific shock and abject terror. With clear trepidation, Sophie approached the door.

  I played harder, my heartbeat matching my erratic drumming.

  She stepped out, the other women right behind her. "Hamish," she said in a hissing whisper. "For the sake of all that's holy, stop." She looked frantically around the sidewalk at the spectacle. Sheep and men in kilts were crowded up against the shop window, and the entire street was now filled with onlookers. Cars had stopped, and people were holding up cell phones. A distant siren could be heard over the noise, and I had a worried feeling it might be coming for us.

  I handed Mam the pipes, which she accepted as if taking a child from my arms. "One day I'll forgive you for the way you played today," she whispered.

  Sweat beaded on my forehead and the additional pressure of the enormous crowd was doing little for my nerves. "Sophie," I said, but my throat was dry from the pipes and almost no sound came out. I cleared my throat and tried again, wiping my brow. "Soph," I managed. "Please forgive me," I said.

  Dane stuck his head between us and made a solemn face. "I'm sorry, Hamish, but no one will ever forgive you for what you did to that song."

  Her eyes remained wide, and her mouth dropped open slightly. Her gaze stayed mostly on me, but darted around every few seconds at the people massed behind me. "What is this, Hamish?"

  "It's an apology, lass."

  "And a traditional Durnish wedding processional," Mam explained.

  "But mostly an apology," I said, feeling like I should probably handle this and not let my mother fight my battle in this particular situation.

  "I see," Sophie said, and I could see a hint of amusement in her eyes, which gave me confidence.

  I risked a step closer, and took one of her hands, encouraged when she didn't immediately pull it away. Erica sucked in a loud breath when I dropped to my knee, and the sound was echoed through the crowd.

  "He's proposing!" someone yelled.

  "He already proposed, loser," Trace yelled back.

  "Then what's all this?" asked a female voice.

  Trace turned to face the crowd, shrugging. "I don't have a clue. It's Durnish. C'mon, just pay attention. It's romantic as hell. I mean...there's sheep!"

  "Hey, why did Hammer shave his beard?" That was a question I hadn't expected from a stranger today. But I'd shaved in an effort to clean up as much as possible to present myself to Sophie, not that it was anyone else's business.

  "Can ya all quiet down a bit and let me get through this?" I asked, standing to face the crowd.

  The crowd erupted in cheers, and I sighed, kneeling back down and waiting until Sophie would be able to hear me again.

  "Lass, I haven't done things right with you. Not since that last night at home when I held you in my arms. I should have come back for you. I should have made sure you knew I meant it when I said there was no one else for me. Not in Durnland, and not here."

  I took a breath, and Sophie's face softened slightly. I held her soft fingers in my own like they were delicate, made of glass. "When I found you again a couple weeks ago, I knew about the ultimatum. I've known about it my whole life, I just haven't thought about it in a long time, but Charlie and Mari reminded me, and then Mari told me about you coming here six years ago. She broke her promise to you because she knew she had to."

  "She had to?" Sophie's eyebrows lowered.

  "She knew I'd never marry anyone else. So if there was any chance I might try to keep my claim, I'd have to find you. And you'd have to be willing still to marry me. And I know maybe I did it all wrong, but your step-dad didn't have the right of things either." My words were rushing now, and I tried to slow them down. "Here's the truth of it. I don't think I could ever marry anyone else. I've never stopped l
oving you, not for a day or even a second. Even during those years apart, you've been the only woman in my heart, and I just don't think I'd be capable of changing that. So when I found you again, it felt like it was meant to be—like it was so obvious. And so I think I rushed things, and fecked it all up."

  Sophie shook her head lightly. "No," she said, but when she didn't continue, my mouth began moving again, churning out more words in an effort to hold onto the only woman I could ever love.

  "I should have told you right away, about the timeline," I said. "It was just...honestly, Sophie, that doesn't matter to me. Or it does, but you matter so much more. If I can't have you, well, I'll give up everything else. I couldn't marry someone just to keep my place. My heart just wouldn't have it." I sighed, trying to make sense of the feelings battering my insides like angry birds. "What I'm trying to say is that I don't care about the crown, I don't care about the legacy. None of it matters at all if I don't have you. And I'll spend the rest of my life trying to convince you to have me if that's how long it takes."

  My beautiful girl's eyes were shining now, and tears ran down the faces of the women behind her. Magalie had a hand pressed to her mouth, and Erica and Mrs. Fuerte had arms around one another.

  "Sophie, I guess what I'm asking is, will ya give me another chance?"

  "Only if you promise never to play the pipes in my presence again," she said, breaking into a laugh and then taking a step closer as I stood. My arms wrapped around her and I buried my face in her silky hair, breathing in her scent of flour and sugar and roses. "And grow your beard back, please," she said. "You don't look like yourself."

  As she said those words, Sophie stiffened and pulled away from me, squinting up at me critically and then her face clearing. "Ah," she said, in some kind of understanding I was missing. She turned to the women who'd been with her in the shop. "Look at him!" She cried.